And OH NOES! Rick Barnes committed an NCAA violation. What is the egregious sin of which he is guilty? Paying one of his assistants out of his own pocket because he thought he deserved as much as another assistant. Barnes brought it to the attention of the purse string folks, and they said it wasn’t in the budget, so Barnes fixed that for them by paying it out of his own salary. Hang him high!

Recruiting update

In the process, I think we’ve also learned something important about Phillip Fulmer. Do you remember how a certain former coach used to get roasted for touting his own (sometimes questionable) accomplishments? And have you noticed that Pruitt’s not been doing that? Fulmer’s doing it for him. Accolades are always more credible and thus better received when it’s someone other than you giving them. Maybe that will change once Pruitt’s not playing catch up with recruits, but if that’s the model going forward, it’s an important public relations improvement.

“He showed he can turn recruiting around in a hurry. We tripled our recruiting board in like two days, with that staff — and not people that we were looking at, but people that were looking at us. That made a big difference. Unfortunately we had the early signing period. I’d like to have had another couple weeks with that, or it could have been really good.

“But we got recruiting turned, and turned quickly, and hopefully we can finish strong here. That’s the foundation of winning, is having the good players here.”